Almost all studies of industrial unrest in Britain before the First World War neglect the Belfast dock strike of 1907. Yet throughout the summer of 1907 that city was convulsed by a bitter and protracted strike involving dock labourers, carters and coal carters. At its height the dispute was estimated to have involved 10,000 on strike or locked out as a consequence of the strike, and threatened to involve a further 50,000 workers employed in the flax-spinning industry. In addition the strains which it imposed on the Belfast Royal Irish Constabulary precipitated a mutiny within that force, which induced the Liberal Government to sanction the despatch of some 6,000 regular soldiers to Belfast to maintain order.

From the formation of the Socialist League on December 30, 1884, until an anarchist take-over forced William Morris from the Common-weal editorship on May 25, 1890, the Council of the League gave a special importance to its pamphlet and leaflet publication. In Common-weal their significance was made quite explicit:

“The Manifesto of the League, the pamphlets in the ‘Socialist Platform’ series, the leaflets issued by the Council of the League, and articles definitely so stated in the 'Weal, are the only authoritative expositions of the League's creed and policy.”

After May 25, 1890, notions of “creed and policy” lost force, and – as some late publications show - it rapidly became impossible to identify any corporate responsibility.

The twin processes of industrialisation and urbanisation lie at the heart of the evolution of modern British society, in North-East England as in other areas of large scale industrial development. Despite the cardinal importance of the interaction between these two processes the relationship is only very imperfectly understood; this weakness is in part due to the limited amount of investigation which has taken place, in part to serious deficiencies in the surviving evidence, and in part to the inherent complexity of the subject. As yet, for example, we have no adequate studies of the major industries of the region, including coal-mining and shipbuilding, while our knowledge of the development of urban communities is very far from complete. In addition much of the archaeological evidence for the older parts of the industrial communities has disappeared, or is disappearing, often without adequate study or record. In these circumstances an essay on the relationship between industrialisation and urbanisation in North-East England must be tentative and limited, and should be seen as an attempt to bring together some of the available material rather than one which offers an explanatory model.